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Bob
Bergstrom
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Despite the charisma, genteel urbanity, charm, eternal youthfulness, rugged athleticism, and intellectual prowess that should have, by now, guaranteed Bob endless flights in private jets, a long string of successful marriages to movie actresses, and unimaginable wealth, Bob currently toils away the few, pitiable remaining years of his life as a patent attorney. Once a scuba diver, rock climber, white-water kayaker, pilot, mountain climber, and skydiver, Bob is now a broken, near-sighted, bifocal-clad, and meek shadow of his former dynamic self, tirelessly working, often past midnight, hunched over his computer in a tiny, dark office, bathed in the bluish glow of a CRT screen, in order to support his beautiful, although somewhat demanding, wife and handler Aileen (a.k.a. "Pea," "Sweet Pea," and "Ling"), and children Trevor (a.k.a. the "Big T"), Kirana (a.k.a. "Key" and "Kiki"), and Benny (a.k.a. "Baby Wadoo" and "Little B"). A former resident of Spokane, where he marveled at "bat-wing" fighters taking off from Fairchild air-force base, Othello, where he reanimated frozen lizards and watched diesel trains pounding into town along the feet of the Saddle Mountains, Royal Camp, where he gained expertise in building and operating slingshots fashioned from coat hangers and rubber bands, and Olympia, from where he traveled to Seattle in 1966 to see the Beatles live, and where he first heard the music of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Country Joe and the Fish on a small, vacuum-tube radio, Bob graduated from Olympia High School in 1971. Bob initially rejected the notion of higher education, purchased a used VW bug using the proceeds of three years of work in hospital kitchens, public libraries, and various lawns and yards, and drove off into the wide world. In a campground along the Oregon coast, Bob met a group of freewheeling, long-haired travelers. Fascinated with their tales of hitchhiking in distant lands, he sold the VW bug and embarked on a year-long series of adventures, hitchhiking about North America, Europe, and Egypt. Bob ended up, the following summer, living in a trash-filled basement along Mud Bay and working for the State of Washington. Considering his humble circumstances one summer afternoon, walking out from the dark basement past odiferous piles of crab and horse-clam shells, remnants of foraging expeditions along Mud Bay and Harstene Island, he decided to enroll at the University of Washington. Bob spent 5 years at UW, from 1972-1977, studying Russian language and literature, chemistry, biochemistry, mathematics, and biology, supporting himself by working in cedar shake mills on the Olympic Peninsula during the summers and with various work-study jobs on campus. He earned a BA in Russian and a BS in biology (molecular and cellular biology). Graduating into a grim employment market, after a single, and remarkably unsuccessful, job interview with the CIA in 1977, Bob found himself back in the cedar shake mills during the remainder of 1977 and the spring of 1978, living in various locations, including a tent at the side of a mill dump, an unpowered and unplumbed trailer filled with nocturnal, acrobatic mice, and under the Highway 101 bridge at Amanda Park. Retaining all ten fingers and limbs, he returned to university life in 1978 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, concurrently earning an MS in computer science, a PhD in biochemistry, with research in x-ray crystallography, a private pilot's license, and a class D skydiving license. Bob fondly recalls often spending 24-36 hours non-stop programming on a PDP-11/70 in the basement of the computer science building in Madison, only to drag himself back to the biochemistry building to resume an endless, and generally fruitless, search for crystallized macromolecules – the starting point for x-ray diffraction studies that eventually lead to molecular structures. Finally completing his MS in May of 1983, Bob hurried to finish his PhD thesis in the late fall of 1983 as the weather grew colder and he grew increasingly less content to live in a small tent, surrounded by corn fields, at the side of a rural airstrip, and frequently sleeping in his skydiving club's Cessna 182 when the local authorities, occasionally wielding shotguns, were in the mood for late-night assaults on Bob's humble encampment. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1983, Bob worked for many years in the computer and software industries as a software engineer in the areas of operating systems development, hierarchical, relational, and object-oriented database development, interpreters, networking, and applications development. Around October 16, 1989, while in Indonesia, Bob met his future wife Aileen, and after a long, romance-filled, 4-day courtship, and an extensive 10-day engagement, Bob and Aileen were married on October 31st without realizing that, while any other day in Indonesia, it was Halloween back home, in the USA. Tired of dead-end engineering jobs, and burdened with the financial realities attendant with a growing family, Bob decided to yet again enroll in a university. While working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley to support a growing family, Bob obtained a JD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1995. Since then, Bob has worked as a patent attorney, occasionally moonlighting as an engineer, preparing and prosecuting patent applications in the areas of computer software, hardware, and architecture, including compilers, operating systems, databases, and various other complex software and hardware technologies; bioinformatics; quantum computing; information science; molecular-array technologies; biochemistry; chemistry; electronics; semiconductor fabrication, nanotechnology, molecular electronics, fuel cells, and complex, computer-controlled mechanical systems. Occasionally, Bob has even made use of his Russian-language background, translating scientific articles and patents in the course of prosecuting patents. Unfortunately, Bob has had to courageously struggle, during his entire professional career, with severe addictions to chocolate, black licorice, sunflower seeds, and lattes. Although not yet having gained an upper hand over these tragic substance-abuse problems, Bob is ever hopeful that this evil will eventually depart, and plague him no further. Perhaps the single point mutation responsible for the combined chocolate/licorice/sunflower-seed/latte addiction will soon be identified, leading to a dramatic cure. Bob loves his job, enjoys working on challenging scientific and technical problems, is grateful for having had the fortune to work with so many wonderfully creative, intelligent, and good-natured inventors and in-house attorneys, continues to relentlessly study math and science, and even continues to program. Bob is indebted to Joanne Bourguignon and his many great clients, including in-house counsels and many prominent technologists, scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Bob recognizes that he, like most people, is the product of many years of careful instruction and training, and Bob has had the great fortune to have learned from a large number of mentors, teachers, and colleagues for whom he feels lifelong gratitude, including, in addition to his wife Aileen:
Bob's Favorite Things
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Website Copyright
2003/2006 Olympic Patent Works, PLLC
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